


Alternatives

by WackyGoofball



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Drama & Romance, F/M, JB Secret Santa, Oneshot, Post-Apocalypse, Prompt Fic, Romance, because my prompts were not christmas-y!, but it's not a christmas theme!, sort of open ending... ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13119207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WackyGoofball/pseuds/WackyGoofball
Summary: Jaime and Brienne try their best to stay alive in the times after the great war ended, only to carry on with the White Walkers still roaming Westeros, forcing them to run from the creatures in the vain hope to survive.However, with such a life comes much sacrifice, just like it comes with a kind of hopelessness that Jaime and Brienne can only deal with as they keep each other afloat in the raging sea now their lives.P.S.: I suck at summaries.





	Alternatives

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kittles123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittles123/gifts).



> Hello everyone, thanks for looking into this story!
> 
> As part of the JB Secret Santa 2017 Extravaganza, I was matched with wonderful Kittles, who has iven me the three prompt words: Post-apocalyptic, Fugitives, Gun-Arm. 
> 
> I tried to make the most out of it, so I hope you enjoy this take on the prompts, even though I didn't twist it into a Christmas tale! 
> 
> Please note: I'd ask you not to repost the fanart I included somewhere else without giving proper credit. Thaaaaaanks! 
> 
> Oh yeah, almost forgot: Warnings go as always. Still no native, still rolling around un-beta'd. 
> 
> I hope y'all will enjoy. 
> 
> Much love and Merry Christmas!
> 
> *tosses confetti*

 

Brienne lets out a sigh as she stuffs the transmitter back into her pocket to pick her binoculars back up. Not that there is much to look at, really, considering that around them is nothing but wasteland that has been their home for what feels like far too long already, a time too thinned out by the edges to hold on to.

While the colds of the Long Night have mostly retreated back to the North, to where they belong, the war against the living dead is still raging, leaving even the warmest spots in the South bitter cold in the night as the Others keep blowing their misty breaths into a dark night’s sky.

All thought the war would settle the matter in one epic battle, or at the least, a few bigger battles in the North, where all united, knowing that their petty little quarrels over territories were as useless as now proves to be the entire war they fought for, died for, made sacrifices for.

In the end, there was no end, though.

In the end, it was a stone tossed into the water that held off some of the tide, but was soon swept away by the water that just kept coming.

In the end, it was only just the beginning of something else, a transformation of the ending that should have been but never was.

It was crawling ever since, face in the dust, stones biting into the shins and arms, leaving bloody scratches and pain, with only just one direction, forward, forward, away, away.

No loss. No victory. Something in-between that feels like losing in the long run.

 _How does Jaime always say? It’s a slower death that we achieved, a last respite, no more, no less. And perhaps, he has the rights of it in that regard, which is rare enough_.

Brienne glances down on the wasteland below the hill she drove up earlier, so to have a better view on the area. Not much has remained of King’s Landing as a result of the usage of wildfire some years back, first re-employed by self-proclaimed President Cersei Lannister, then later reused when they evacuated the city to blow up as many White Walkers as they could in one massive blow against the creatures that had managed to creep South.

That was perhaps one of the most effective moves they did in the entire war, because fighting in the North proved to be not nearly as victorious as the green-burning capitol proved to be. The only thing the two battles shared was that both cost many lives, came at great costs, and neither won the war for them.

However, as a result of the wildfire bombing, nothing but blown away ashes remained of the Crownlands, which means that staying in the area is no option in the long run.

Not that staying anywhere is a sound plan for the distant future. Everything is terminated as of late, a short escape of the escape itself. They are always on the run from the White Walkers once the resources have diminished, forcing them to travel further and further, to the point that “home” is long since an unfamiliar concept to them all.

Future was cut repeatedly, to the point that all future seems to have broken off under the weight of the past pulling it down. Thus, there seems only a present now, a present that wipes out all those concepts that once promised stability, the family, the home, peace.

_All gone now._

Brienne puts the binoculars down, blinking at the darkening sky that bears no stars, no light, even the moon hiding away behind shreds of clouds stretching across the firmament.

Thunder rolls across the gray clouds, tumbles, grumbles, howls and hisses as one round has to make space for the next.

Brienne lets out a grunt as she abandons the cliff and walks back over to her dusty motorcycle, if you can even call it that still, as many reparations as she had to do over time. The tall woman runs her fingers over the dusty, yet smooth surface of the metal, feels the dents there, knowing exactly how they came about. Her digits stop at one in particular, bringing back a memory of how that dent ended up there in the first place.

A fight against a group of White Walkers while they were in the Riverlands to pick up much-needed provisions on their quest South. One of the monsters was about to knock her head off her shoulders with a frozen club, until Jaime sent the thing flying with his arm-gun, the impact knocking him off his feet as well.

Though Brienne recalls much more prominently the verbal fight they had thereafter. She lamented all the while that he ruined her bike, whereas Jaime argued that maybe he should have let the White Walker take off her head “if only to make you shut up and be grateful for once in your life, wench!” And that had them laugh, a thing of rarity in a world that has not much joy to give. She can still remember the long, strenuous way to camp, because Brienne had to push the vehicle all the way back, the pain in her arms as well as her stomach as they just kept going wonderfully unbearable. They sounded almost like they did before the war was lost-not-lost, when everything was chaotic, still, but not as much as it is now.

_It's curious how you only know to appreciate certain times in your life in the retrospective, once you realize how much you are going to lose in the future, or how much better that time of your life will seem in the face of the life still ahead of you._

Brienne tilts her head upwards, feeling a cold gust brush against her skin, coming from the North. She shudders as the thunder keeps rolling past her head, to lands far out of her – or anyone’s – reach.

“This better not be any snow,” she mutters as she zips her bag. “We’ve had by far enough of that by now. Winter has come and gone long time ago, Seven Hells.”

The blonde woman turns back to the cliff one more time, detecting no movement, as she pulls her hood over her head to proceed to put on her glasses and helmet.

Time to go home.

_Wherever that place is._

* * *

“Dondarrion, I swear, if you don’t quit singing right fuckin’ now, I will tear your tongue out!” the Hound curses, one boot on the chair in front of him, taking another swig from on of the bottles of booze they found upon coming to the shabby inn through which the winds are howling shrilly.  

“My, my, aren’t we in a jovial mood tonight, Clegane?” Beric laughs throatily, his feet still tapping to a beat only he seems to know at this point, his gaze idly focused on the fire they lit.

“What’s there to be fuckin’ jovial about, you cunt? We’re all going to get our guts ripped out by one of those ice bastards one of these days. So why sing chanties about the good old times – coz sure as hell are those over!” Sandor snaps, stomping his foot on the ground, making the chair jump once at the sheer impact. “If there ever were.”

“Why not sing the songs of the good times? The Lord of Light has determined it all, the failure as well as the victories, so why not celebrate the days we still have to spare to dedicated to his cause?” the other man argues. “I tend to think we spend our time best making the most out of what we have left.”

“To hell with the Lord of Light.”

“For a converted Red Priest, that is rather harsh of you, wouldn’t you agree?” Anguy jumps in with a smirk tugging at his lips. Sandor narrows his eyes at the men singing their songs by the fire, muttering incoherent curses to himself.

“I’ll blame that Cunt of Myr for it forever and always. Brainwashed me into carrying on with this shit after he got ripped open by that wight bear back North,” the Hound snaps, hugging his chest. “I should’ve just run while I still could. And now I stuck with you _jovial_ bunch of sons of bitches.”

“Or perhaps you just discovered the faith in you that was there all along,” Beric hums, glancing back at the fireplace, likely seeing future there where there is clearly none, because the fire doesn’t hold it.

 _Not the way he thinks, at least_.

“Or perhaps you will just shut the fuck up,” the man with the scar stretching across one side of his face retorts angrily, before letting his gaze wander around the room. “I used to go to that inn back when it was not yet halfway burned down. They had good roasted chicken. And beer. And ale. Your Lord of Light would know how much I would do for just one decent dinner.”

“Well, maybe one of your chickens got roasted in the wildfire and you just didn’t find it in all the ashes just yet,” Anguy suggests jokingly. “Perhaps you want to take another tour around to see if the chicken’s out there waiting for you to be eaten.”

“One of these days, I’ll roast one of you,” Sandor grumbles, taking another swig from the bottle, putting his foot back on the chair.

“Oh, you would lose your teeth, Clegane. We are tough to chew, all worn out from years of voyage and fighting the living dead,” Beric argues. “I can’t imagine that to be a good meal for you.”

“And we are the only ones who put up with your foul temper,” Anguy adds, to which the others laugh. “Who else would keep your company if not us?”

It seems almost peaceful, those scenes, as though death was not looming outside that door.

_Though evidently, it is._

Jaime takes a sip from the broken glass he found behind the counter, for once wanting to drink _not_ straight from the bottle, careful not to cut himself on the sharp edge. All booze tastes like gasoline anyway, though perhaps it really _is_ gasoline and they are just too complacent to bother to care at this point, _upon reflection_. Jaime doesn’t know and is apparently too complacent to bother to care to investigate, too.

But that is what such times do with you: While you come to cherish the smallest of things, like drinking from a glass, you realize rather sooner than later that it all means nothing, that even that surge of nostalgia is all but fleeting, a small comfort in a world that offers none. But in the end, you just stop caring.

_You become numb to those things – and just take another swig._

His eyes drift to the door, then each window, only to return to the men busily talking, drinking, singing – and trying to stop one another from singing in the case of the reluctant Red Priest with the scar. Jaime takes another sip, tapping his index finger against the glass.     

_It’s long since time._

“Shouldn’t we be shutting down by now?” one of the men calls out after a while. Jaime sits up straighter in his seat, feeling the muscles in his back tense at once.

“You should be shutting your mouth, that's all,” Jaime retorts loudly, his eyes no more than narrow slits. “You do the math for me. How many people are we?”

“Six,” the other man answers.

“How many people are part of this _jovial_ group, you remind me?” Jaime goes on.

“Seven,” the dark-haired man answers, copying Jaime’s expression, trying to act tough.

“Well, that means we ain’t shutting down anything until we are seven again. It’s not such a complicated concept, now is it?” Jaime snaps. “While you seem to fancy the Red God, you may be able to recall that there are those who believe in the Seven. And with them, the case is quite the same. You only get them in the pack. It’s the Seven, not the Six, or else they would have to change all those texts that remained of the Seven-Pointed Star after the burning of the great libraries of the Citadel.”

“Did you just call me dumb?” the man grumbles, seemingly sincerely believing that this is a fight he can somehow win.

_What a fool._

“I didn’t _say_ it, but I definitely _meant_ that, yes,” Jaime replies, putting the glass down on the table with a thud.

“You…”

Jaime raises his right arm with the blaster attached in the man’s direction, the red light within already humming a song that has everyone jump, knowing that it is not just an empty thread – that is not what Kingslayers do.

“You know, I lost that hand, unfortunately, but the gun-arm that came to replace it acts fast and does… _a lot_ of damage, you  might recall, so if your life is dear to you in any way, you will chill out, sit down, drink, and shut the fuck up.”

“You heard the Kingslayer,” Beric jumps in, eyeing the younger man with a bit of annoyance and irritation. “We are only shutting down once all are back. No exceptions.”

While Jaime does not consider Beric Dondarrion his friend by any means, the war taught him that the man, in contrast to most, has some values he upholds.

_Which is more than you can say about most of his companions._

However, that is the thing when you are caught up in a world that is dipped into the shadows of a nearing ending: You don’t get to choose your companions. Something that is true for them the same way it is true for what once was the Brotherhood without Banners, a special forces team that got corrupted by the War of the Five Kings, until nothing much safe for its leader and some of the fellows remained of the shreds they managed to carry with them over the years.

Those men are less than pleased to have to side with the Kingslayer of all people, Jaime is more than aware. He actually takes a bit of joy in it, that they hate him about as much as he hates them.

Yet, those are actually the kinds of people he knows how to deal with. Jaime is used to being despised. It’s a calculable reaction. If people hate you, their reactions are always very similar. There are no bad surprises. The fronts are clear.

 _And that means raising your gun-arm against them is usually enough to make them shut up_ , Jaime thinks to himself as he takes another swig from his broken glass of could-be-gasoline, easing his arm back down.

The man grumbles some incoherent curses to himself, but then goes back to drinking from his bottle, starting to hum the melody Dondarrion began. The other men soon join into the chorus as it turns more and more solemn, like the cold winds blowing and slapping against the walls of the bar as storms from the North keep travelling their direction, no matter how far South they go.

Jaime lets out a shaky sigh into his glass, white mist collecting at the cool, smooth surface of the container. He knows this isn’t doing them any favors, but Jaime can’t help himself.

There are lines they have to learn not to cross. And if he has to aim that firearm at them a hundred time more, Jaime will keep doing it until they understand that it is not up to them to decide on where to move the goalposts.

He leans back on the squeaking chair, looking over to the windows with wooden planks provisionally hammered across it as the wind and rain start to slap against them.

It’s strange how the equally provisional home of the bar can morph into a cage. It seems to depend on what side you stand on. When you are outside, you want nothing but get in, but once you are in, you will want to be out rather sooner than later.

The men singing and humming songs about the Long Night, as the war against the living dead was later on referred to, fades out inside Jaime’s ears, until a soft murmur remains to sing a duet with the hum of the booze-slash-gasoline.

However, that is when a noise cuts through the solemn songs, which has him let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

The door swings open and Brienne strides in, helmet stuffed under her arm, her hair a wet mess, some thick strands of her blonde curls sticking to her forehead. Her clothes are dark from the rain, hanging down the length of her.

_Small wonder, considering the downpour._

“So you are alive after all. Your boyfriend was already worried and on the verge of crying,” the man who can’t seem to count to seven whose face Jaime tends to forget time and time again huffs with an amused grin tugging at his lips.

“Yeah, I bet. Like you were when you got bit by a non-poisonous snake?” Brienne answers drily.

There was a time when she wouldn’t have talked like that, but the remains of the Brotherhood and Jaime himself seem to do enough damage to her manners. However, Jaime sees the merit in it. The more she acts like them, the less they see Brienne as something alien. Because it is that which is strange, unknown, that men fear most.

And fear is what you can’t afford having in a constellation such as this.

The other men start to laugh at Brienne’s comment, the tension of before slowly but surely dissolving.

“Anything new from your front?” Beric asks.

“No White Walkers from that direction for at least tonight,” Brienne replies, running her fingers through her wet hair.

“Anything else?” the man with eye-patch questions.

“Some wild chickens, by any chance? To calm the Hound at least for a while?” Anguy laughs, shooting Sandor a teasing grin.

“No wild chickens, no, but…,” Brienne says, before reaching into her bag and pulling out a set of cloth bundles, which she tosses on the table in front of her. “Better than nothing.”

“Do I want to know what animals those were?” Anguy chuckles softly, already digging through the bundles.

“No, you just close your eyes and pretend that it’s chicken,” the blonde woman answers, allowing her gaze to briefly meet Jaime’s.

In the wake of the War of the Five Kings, they got captured by a militant group that was in with the Boltons, though the men were more of ruthless rebels than anything else. They wanted to collect the bounty on Jaime’s head and hence took him and Brienne captive. By that time, however, he was already captive to the blonde woman with brilliant blue eyes, so they just dragged her along. So Jaime had little care to give to Brienne by the time, only ever bringing himself to warn her that the men would likely try take her by force and that she would do best not to fight them.

It was then that he told her that she should close her eyes and pretend that they are Renly, the man she had been in love with, though he died of young age, never returning the fancy she had for the man, murdered by his brother as they fought for presidency.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that so much time has passed between them by now to turn such an experience, which cost him his hand eventually, into a joke that makes sense only amongst themselves.

“Well, this one has at least legs…,” Anguy laughs. “Clegane! How about you pick first? What do you think is most chicken-like, hm?”

“Just leave me the fuck alone.”

 Jaime gets up from his chair after exchanging a quick look with Brienne. “We should be heading upstairs.”

“We still have to discuss who’s doing nightshift,” the man who just earned himself the spot of the most annoying fellow of the evening pouts.

“You can make that up amongst yourselves. We two took over dayshifts today, you can wrestle with the night,” Jaime retorts. “But I have no trouble revisiting my arguments from earlier that evening. Do I have to, though?”

The man looks at him for a long moment, but then averts his gaze quickly. “All of this is for nothing anyway. What does it matter?”

“Now don’t be such a downer,” Anguy argues, slinging his arm around the man’s shoulder. “Look at the bright side! We have food and something to drink.”

“Won’t keep the White Walkers from coming our way anyway, though.”

“Maybe not, but at least we will go down with the taste of something that could be ale on our tongues,” Anguy argues, pulling the man back over with him to the fireplace, shooting Jaime a mild look before starting the next song.

And that is the thing that is perhaps most frustrating about this all – hating them is not nearly as easy as it should be at times. Because by now, Jaime knows their personal histories to some degree, none of which are framed like the tales you would have once told your children. Thus, he is aware that this man lost his wife to the White Walkers as they headed South, which might explain why he has something against the one woman of the group. Beric once told Jaime that she was also tall in frame. While her eyes used to be green, they turned blue as the Others turned her, and the man had to carry out the deed to put her out of her misery.

 _That doesn’t mean I won’t shoot either one of them in the face if they misbehave, though_ , Jaime thinks to himself, before turning his attention back to Brienne. He gives her a nod, gesturing at the small staircase leading to the upper level of the small inn.  

“C’mon,” he mutters.

“Have fun, you two!” Anguy laughs at them.

“Have fun with the rats, snakes, and the weasel,” Brienne answers as she climbs the stairs.

“Why did you say it???” Anguy calls after them. “That took all the surprise away!”

However, Jaime and Brienne allow the voices to fade as they climb the narrow staircase leading to the rooms that once were there for the travelers who wanted to cross South to trade goods or visit family members.

These days, all those bars and hotels and inns are hideouts and/or ruins, every single one of them.

They head to the small room that they could claim for themselves upon arrival at this place. Because those small wars can end up with at least one person drawing his, or in Brienne’s case her, gun, if only just to get the better protected room, the one with a window, or whatever it is that is of value for each of them.

You fight over the smallest of things especially now, though, upon reflection, the entire Game of Thrones was a big fight over very small things, compared to the war they fought against the living dead.

It’s always just a matter of perspective, or retrospective.

“… I think Clegane is short before cannibalism,” Jaime huffs as he closes the door behind them, feeling somewhat relief at finally being away from the men depriving him of any last nerve he has, because they are all raw these days, lying open like a wound that just won’t heal.

_And guys like that fellow who can’t count just keep prodding at that nerve._

“So long he doesn’t start to chew on you, I think you will be fine,” Brienne snorts, looking over her shoulder. “And for now, he has something to eat.”

“Yeah, _for now_.”

Brienne starts to take off her soaked clothes, which stubbornly stick to her skin, whereas Jaime busies himself ridding himself of the gun fit to his stump like a metal glove.

 _Well, more or less, because the harness with which the thing is kept in place is not so much a glove but a straight-jacket_.  

To this day, the damned thing gives him trouble.

“I will knock his teeth out if he tries to nibble on me,” he laughs, busy with the buckles of the harness.

Brienne slips off the shoulder pad with a clink of the metal pieces from which it was made, more of a makeshift thing that once belonged to the gear she wore during the war against the White Walkers.

It was a gift by him when they had to part ways in King’s Landing as she tried to bring Sansa Stark to safety after the young woamn had been taken away by Petyr Baelish during the events of what was later on referred to as the Purple Wedding that put an end to Joffrey Baratheon’s life, who had more lion than stag in him that the wicked boy had ever known.  

Brienne insisted on keeping the remains of that “armor” even after it had been rendered almost completely useless, considering the damage it took during the war against the White Walkers.

 _And considering the damage she took foremost_.

While still recovering in the infirmary after the loss-win-win-loss, Brienne breathlessly asked for the thing almost straight away. Jaime only ever laughed at her for that, believing it a jest, but when she insisted, eyes searching nervously for the thing, he got her the rags that had remained of her gear. She picked out the one part of her vest that was mostly intact and kept it close to her chest for quite some time.

Back then, Jaime didn’t understand why she insisted on keeping that thing that would later on become the shoulder pad with which Brienne blocked some many blows these past few years.

It wasn’t until later on their constant run from the spoils of war that kept on spoiling that he learned the small-big truth behind it all, scratched into the metal underneath the worn, dusty fabric, probably with a knife or the edge of one of her guns.

Ten letters. One word.

The third last they spoke before she drove away to find Sansa.

“In any case, you still have to set my transmitter back to normal,” Jaime goes on to say, focusing back on the one time there is – the present. “I cannot accept being censored by a friggin’ messenger device.”

“But that makes it a _much_ more pleasant read for me,” Brienne argues with the hint of a smile tugging at her lips as she keeps wrestling with her soaked clothing.

“If I curse, I curse. We are long since past the point of human decency in that regard. In times of war, you can say ‘fuck’ as much as you want, no one cares,” Jaime says. “That is one of the few pleasures I have left in life, wench. Don’t you dare take that away from me as well.”

Jaime abandons the harness still giving him trouble, and instead decides to add gravitas to his words by tossing a towel at Brienne, though _, of course_ , she catches it before it can hit her in the side of the head.

_It’s the little things after all…_

Brienne buries her face in the towel to wipe off the drops of rainwater on her pale skin, which muffles her voice in turn. “Well, you don’t have to say it to _me_.”

“But you are the only one I bother talking to in all earnest,” Jaime insists, continuing his battle against the harness that just won’t seem to come off.

And while his tune is light, the message couldn’t be any sincerer than that, and both know it.

“Which is troubling, considering that I am not nearly as interested in the conversations we are having, particularly those over the transmitter,” Brienne huffs as she pulls the towel away, her face slightly red from where she rubbed the fabric against it.

“Another thing that I think we ought to address is your stubborn mulishness to keep to yourself, wench,” he grumbles. “The guys already wanted to shut down.”

“But you seem to have prevented it, huh?” she sighs as she reaches into her bag to take out some fresh clothes.

“Of course I did,” he snorts.

_Always will._

“Well, then there is no problem, is there?” she sighs while unfolding one of the few fresh shirts she still has.

“I would rather have you take up more patrols in closer periphery,” he grumbles. Jaime has tried numerous times to try to reason with her, _but with the wench, there is no way of reasoning once she got something stuck inside her stubborn head_.

“And let any of those sons of guns take _my_ motorcycle? No way in the Seven Hells,” Brienne retorts as she turns her back towards him to pull off her wet shirt, and quickly slip into the dry one.

“Fuck that stupid motorcycle,” he huffs, still amused at those faint glimmers of the shy woman with stubborn bravery at the same time still turning her back while changing as though he hadn’t seen it all already during that one revealing bath they shared at Harrenhal. “It’s definitely not worth dying for.”

“I wouldn’t _die_ for it, now don’t be foolish,” she argues, rolling her eyes. Brienne tugs on the shirt as it still sticks to her clammy skin. “I am just saying that I will do whatever I want to see being done, like it or not. You don’t get to dictate me about what shifts I take and in what fashion.”

“I didn’t say that, I just requested it,” he argues with a smirk.

“And your request was denied,” Brienne declares as she turns back around to face him, her movements feeling as though they were an extension of his. He knows how she is going to move before she does. They have been moving down the same path for what feels like a small eternity stuffed into a present without a future. Her moves are as familiar to him as are his own.

They have their small, little routines. Once she is done getting changed, and he has not yet won the war against the harness, Brienne will just grab it and help him. No words spoken. No glances exchanged.

And tonight is no different.

_It never is._

“You do realize that I am just trying to be nice and thoughtful?” he teases as she works on the leather belts keeping his gun-arm attached to his stump.

“You do realize that this is far too much unlike you?” she snorts.

Jaime scoffs in turn, if amused.

“We’ve had that discussion way too often by now. Feels like a broken record,” Brienne adds.

“I think the inn is making us stupid,” Jaime huffs, looking around. “Well, that or the gasoline we keep drinking.”

“You know, no one forces you to drink?” she snorts, finishing the last straps.

“And you know that they are only bearable once I am drunk?” he snickers.

“Well, we won’t be staying for much longer, will we?” Brienne asks as the harness comes off at last. She grabs the gun-arm, pulls it off in a manner that makes all of it seem normal for a moment there.

_Though all of this is an abnormality, the entire world is._

“Doesn’t seem like it,” he sighs, glancing over to the small window.

“Then the cabin fever will come to an end. In my experience, Clegane is at his best when we are on the road. Then he has some purpose to focus his efforts on instead of wrestling with his faith, trying to make himself believe that he didn’t convert for a very certain purpose.”

“Man, if only I cared about Mr. Sandor Clegane’s trouble of faith,” Jaime snorts, rolling his eyes.

Brienne shrugs. “It’s an interesting story to listen to.”

“He doesn't seem very talkative beyond the bitching.”

 “Well, what other stories do I have to listen to? Beric likes to tell the most outrageous tales, fueled by his men in search of a legend that no longer is. And the rest of the guys are awfully dull in their wish to boast,” Brienne sighs.

No, this time writes no good stories anymore.

“Well, you got _me_ to talk to,” Jaime says with a grin.

“At this point of time, I think I know all of your stories,” Brienne exhales.

Jaime chuckles. “Which you should consider an honor.”

“How so?” she huffs.

“Who beside you can say of herself that she knows all stories the Kingslayer has to tell? A man whose name is oh so mysterious, a man likely no one truly knows, or ever knew,” Jaime points out with a smirk.

“Well, you did have family,” Brienne argues, her voice very quiet all of a sudden.

That was something they both had to get used to: using the past tense when it came to their lost loved ones.

Jaime lost the children already before he ever set out North. Cersei put an end to her own life by refusing to abandon the city as it burned, seemingly having gone completely mad over her wish to stay in power, not realizing how little that actually meant. Tyrion, against all odds of his sneaky, witty nature, went into battle against the living dead alongside them. He took over the new Scorpion that he had seen being manufactured in order to fend off one of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons that had fallen into the icy hands of the Night’s King. He and Bronn worked the newer version with absolute expertise. They brought down the dragon successfully, but it had left the two too vulnerable to the White Walkers in turn. And so, first Bronn, somehow finding it with himself to protect perhaps the one good friend he’s ever made in his entire life in all earnest, left his life, and later on Tyrion as well.

It’s easy to slip back into the present tense when talking about them, to have this feeling of them still being around, when they are long since turned to ash and dust cast into the winds coming North.

However, there is a small consolation in their usage of the past tense. There is an awareness of it being a painful tense to use, something to make you cautious, a small if powerful caution that shows that you share the pain of the past tense.

“I realized far too late that I didn’t know my family half as good as I thought I did and that, in turn, my family knew… shit about me,” Jaime scoffs.

“Tyrion knew you well,” she argues.

“He knew how to read me, the little devil. But there were some many stories I didn’t share with him by the time he died. And there is even more of that which I never told Cersei. So… you are the only one who knows my story, I am afraid.”

Though he is not afraid of it really, he is glad for it.

Brienne’s lips turn into a small smile. “A seemingly meaningful burden for me to carry.”

“ _Burden_? I just said it’s a _reward_. You have to listen more carefully.”

“There lies much burden in such reward,” she sighs.

“Ugh, this is getting too philosophical for me,” Jaime grunts. “I am too drunk. We should get some sleep before the guys decide that they want us to do extra shifts for some nonsense reason.”

“Other than that you don’t like to volunteer for them?” she chuckles.

“ _No one_ likes to volunteer for them.”

“True again,” Brienne agrees, sitting down on the thin mattress they were able to keep. The rest of the furniture, including the beds, went into firewood resources to keep the inn from freezing in the nights, which still have harsh winds blow coming from the North to no end, it seems.

Brienne scoots over towards the wall while Jaime sits down on the other side of the mattress, fingers curling around the thin blankets they carry with them to pull over them both.

She can still remember how reluctant she was at first to share such a tight space with Jaime, not only because he likes to snore at times. It only ever started when they headed North for the war, really. Space was scarce, people had to share rooms and tents, whatever spaces they had open to access. Jaime insisted that they are in the same space for the nights before the war began. When Brienne asked him on the matter, Jaime was quite plain about it and said that he wouldn’t see her in trouble because Wildlings don’t know the rules of proper behavior. An assessment likely very much fueled by that one Wilding fellow with the red beard’s continuous, if rather disturbing, advances on her that Jaime chase the man through the yard.

One of the rather joyous scenes that seemed as light as freshly fallen snow. However, his later insistence on the matter was not so light, because she could see it in his eyes that Jaime honestly feared that someone would use the night for his own bargain.

_Men in war, confined to tight, cold spaces… they cross some many barriers for some heat, as Jaime said._

And when the war was over-not-over and people began to scatter across the country in search for that one place that would not be as attractive for the White Walkers, the two made South as well. And they stuck to that routine. The first few nights she slept beside Jaime, Brienne’s back was as tight as a bowstring and she didn’t even know how to breathe every now and then, almost furious with how easily Jaime himself eased into sleep while she was on the edge of jumping up and taking over another night watch if only to escape that.

However, those days lie now far behind them, are buried somewhere deep up North. And so it comes that she finds discomfort not in his presence beside her in bed but in his absence. Because if he isn’t there by nightfall, or she isn’t, trouble is ahead.

“We should have insisted on keeping the bed, you know,” Jaime grumbles, pulling Brienne out of the memories from the North, back to his familiar presence beside her.

“We sleep on muddy, dusty, rocky ground, whichever it is, all the time. I think that this is rather comfortable, considering that we even have a mattress.”

“Yeah, I am keeping that thing most definitely,” Jaime agrees.

“I want to see you taking that along,” she snorts.

Jaime shrugs. “I will just ask Clegane to sit on it to make it a tight bundle. We have to cherish and maintain the few comforts that are still out there.”

She can feel his right arm without a hand reaching over her stomach, a position they settled on his most comfortable for them both, particularly during the cold nights where they are each other’s source of warmth.

“It won’t be a comfortable ride with that thing on the back of your bike,” Brienne points out, finding herself more and more at ease.

“You just watch me,” he chuckles.

“Oh, I will,” she snorts. “And I will laugh as I watch you fail.”

“Which likely makes that endeavor ever the more worthwhile. The wench’s smile are rare gifts,” he snickers.

“Perhaps _she_ would smile more often if you quit calling her wench.”

“It’s my pet name for you. A term of endearment.”

“And yet I am neither your pet, nor do I hold that name any dear,” Brienne argues.

“Then I will have to hold it dear for the both of us,” he sighs.

Brienne wrinkles her nose. “You are being silly from the booze, you know?”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t mean what I say so,” he hums. “Tyrion’s always said that you can find more truths with the drunkards because they got no reason to hide, all walls torn down for them with the aid of liquor and what could be gasoline.”

“Yet, sometimes, they are just damn well stupid and don't know what they are saying, which doesn’t make it any truer,” Brienne answers.

“I think this is getting too philosophical for me already,” Jaime grunts, rubbing the fingers of his left hand against the side of his temple.

“Talking about drunkards is philosophical to you?” she snorts.

“Hm? No, the value of truths and who can lie and who doesn’t… that’s all too aloof for me.”

“Well, you started.”

He chuckles. “True again.”

Jaime blows out air through his nose, pulling Brienne a little closer to himself. “You know, I have been thinking…”

“That never means any good,” she snorts.

“You didn’t even hear my idea just yet,” he laments. “Give me at least the benefit of the doubt here.”

“Alright, then what were you thinking about?” she sighs.

“That we should just ditch all of this here, you know?”

“We are not staying here anyway,” Brienne argues with a frown. “We never are.”

They are fugitives in the place they once called home, before home became too much an abstract concept.

That is their condition.

“No, I mean… this whole thing, not here or elsewhere, but… the idea of it,” Jaime goes on, sounding surprisingly sincere all of a sudden. Brienne can tell. She knows every shift in his voice by heart at this point of time, just like she can tell it by the way he holds her close.

“The idea of it is that we keep in motion, take down as many White Walkers as we can and not die… I don’t see how we have much of a choice to abandon either of those without… getting killed,” she argues. “Or do you mean… going off on our own?”

Brienne can feel him shrug against her jokingly, despite the fact that they both know that he isn’t really joking. “Why not?”

“Because they fight White Walkers and we fight White Walkers. Together, we have better chances of survival. We both agreed on that when we ran into them again in the Riverlands,” Brienne explains.

“Naturally, but what if we stopped… running?” he says.

Brienne frowns. “Are you suggesting a holiday, is that it?”

“In a sense,” he answers in a soft voice.

“You are definitely silly from the booze,” Brienne argues, shaking her head.

“No, I am sincere about that,” he insists.

“Well, I can’t take that sincerely,” Brienne huffs.

_This has to be a joke._

Brienne can feel him sit up on the bed. Her body follows him on its own accord, leaning on her forearm, his stump still draped over her muscular midsection. Brienne frowns at Jaime as he reaches into his pocket with his left hand, only to hold out a folded, grayed piece of cloth between index and middle finger.

“Here,” he says, nodding at her to gesture at her to grab it. Brienne takes it hesitantly, running her thumbs over the rough surface.

“I hope that’s none of your practical jokes again,” she warns him.

“No practical joke, no. Though the last one was a masterpiece,” Jaime chimes, to which Brienne only ever rolls her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, the magical wand. Great masterpiece right there.”

“It’s no joke. Take a look,” he argues, nodding at the cloth again.

Brienne grimaces as she unfolds it. She blinks repeatedly once her eyes catch what is wrapped inside.

“A… squeezed… flower,” Brienne says with furrowed eyebrows.

“Well, it took some damage on the ride back to the inn, but I am telling you, it stood as strong and beautiful as a small flower can,” Jaime says. He was tempted to write her over the transmitter already, but then thought better of it.

This message is too important to just type into a device.

“If you consider that a gift, it’s a poor one, you know?” she scoffs.

“What? Women love flowers,” he laughs.

“I don’t much care about flowers,” Brienne argues, though she still keeps looking at it, looking rather mesmerized.

“Yeah, yeah, I know of your _rose allergy_ ,” Jaime says, nodding his head.

That is one of those stories she trusted him with as their shared journey carried on, about that fool of a man who had her believe that they were going to be engaged, only to ditch her when he was meant to meet her family, using the rose he tossed at her as a last token.

 _Such a fool_.

“Seems like you bear my burdens, too,” Brienne says with a small smile.

“Seems like it, yeah,” Jaime agrees.

“Well, what of it now?” she asks, nodding at the dried flower.

“I found it today. As I was scouting the areas further up North,” Jaime explains.

Brienne’s frown only deepens at that. “So?”

“Further up North, as in… the city of King’s Landing.”

“How does King’s Landing’s ruins now relate to your wish to take a holiday? I don’t get this,” Brienne questions with a grimace.

“I got it from _there_ , the flower. There was a whole bunch of them. Not just flowers, but grass and… and… brushes… all sorts of things that weren’t ash,” Jaime says, feeling his heart beat faster at the mere memory of it.

Because it was right at that moment that he saw something he didn’t ever dare to believe to see again.

He caught a glimpse of an impossibility made possible.

“You mean…,” Brienne mutters, and Jaime completes, “I remember that the Dragon Lady kept saying that the fire was what brought her dragons to life. That there was life in the fire. The Red Woman kept telling the same thing. And I thought it was all bullshit. Because I heard the pyromancers, too, as they kept brewing wildfire. I heard Aerys. They said that nothing would ever grow on the ash brought forth from that green flame.”

Brienne keeps looking at the small plant between her fingers. “And yet… it did.”

“And yet it did indeed,” Jaime agrees.

Brienne leans back on the thin mattress and allows the flower to dance before her big blue eyes, watching it blur out due to the movement.

“Have you told Beric about this yet?” she asks.

“Why should I have?” he questions.

“Jaime,” Brienne groans. “Look, I know you don’t particularly like these men.”

“That is clearly an understatement.”

“You know how I mean it,” she sighs. ““Why didn’t you mention it to them? This is good news. And it’s not like you can hide it from them, if they were to go there on their own. And for what reason anyway?”

“I wanted you to know first,” Jaime answers simply. “To hear your opinion on this.”

“My opinion is that this is… good news,” Brienne answers, still twirling the flower between her fingers, mesmerized by it against the odds of her acting calmly about it otherwise. “So what? Holiday in the flower fields now King’s Landing, without the Brotherhood without Banners? Is that what you mean to suggest?”

“No, but I have been thinking…,” he says, his voice trailing off.

“We have been there before,” she teases.

Jaime grunts as he flops back down on the mattress.

“Are you offended now?” Brienne snickers, amused.

“Greatly,” he jokes.

“Aww, poor you,” Brienne chuckles softly. “So? What have you been thinking again?”

“That when our fugitive life began, we abandoned all paths down the newly burned Black Road,” Jaime begins to explain.

It was a tough decision that they had to make, one that cost Jaime more than he ever thought it would take until his eyes filled with green as he saw the cities burning, one by one. They wanted to decimate the forces that had already gotten past the icy regions of the North to which they should have belonged all along.

_Tyrion’s plan. Which is hardly surprising, considering._

As his little brother said after spewing out a plan colored in green: “It worked at Blackwater Bay, and as sad as it is, it achieved things in King’s Landing towards our wicked sister’s needs, too. If you want enemies to go, _this_ is the way. And if you want enemies made of ice to go away… you use fire that burns long and deep.”

And so, the decision was made. While the Northern forces kept the firy breaths of the dragons for themselves, they let the green fire creep its way across the country, leaving the Black Road behind, eating up parts of what once was the King’s Road, devouring the former capitol, growing into a beast whose appetite could not be satisfied until it died.

It made Aerys’s voice ring so loudly in Jaime’s ears that he felt deaf for at least a day and he only came back around after he heard the one voice that mattered.

“Well, naturally,” the voice says, still idly focused on the flower. “There was nothing much to be gained. Even the animals kept away from all the ash.”

“But the plants came back,” he argues.

“Well, you can’t eat that flower,” Brienne points out.

“But the berries from the brushes. And once there are plants, there are animals. And that means meat… meat means more food…  the cycle of life and all that shit.”

Brienne puts the flower back down, letting it rest in her lap, to turn her attention back to the man beside her. “What’s the actual matter, Jaime?”

“The matter is that we are losing,” he exhales, and she can detect the pain in his voice at once.

“We are not dead yet, that means we are apparently… not losing,” she argues.

“This battle, we will not win it. Everything went out the window since we ended the war in the North. The children of prophecy, they are dead. The armies are scattered across the country, fighting each other if they don’t fight the White Walkers. The people go into hiding. And the cold winds keep blowing.”

“Children of prophecy? You keep saying that prophecies don’t exist,” Brienne argues.

“They don’t, but people are dumb enough to believe in them. They are dumb enough to believe in the folks they think are meant by them. They followed the Dragon Queen. They followed the King in the North, secret son to Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, the man with ice and fire in his veins. They thought that they would bring about that stupid Song of Ice and Fire or whatever it is that they thought would happen. They thought his gun was magical, they thought he was magical, because he came back from the dead, or so it was told. They thought the same about the Dragon Queen, who’s given life to creatures that should have died out hundreds of years ago.”

Jaime shakes his head, glancing at the ceiling. He doesn’t believe in prophecy, doesn’t believe in the Gods, or the Red God, but he knows for a fact that people having faith in the Gods, in the children of prophecy, can have great impact.

_Just not enough sometimes, it appears._

“People wanted to believe that those two are the promised warriors, the chosen ones to bring the tide. But in the end, the King in the North got turned into ice and the fire in his blood did not melt it. They thought the Dragon Queen would bring the tide, but no such luck. She paid life with life by giving hers to unfreeze the dragon she lost to the White Walkers as a last token. And as heroic as it may have been… we still didn’t win the war as a result. We weren’t the chosen people, neither were they. So here we are, a prophecy later, still bound to lose.”

“How does Beric always say? That didn’t go as planned,” she says drily.

“No, it didn’t. But that is the thing… we won without winning and lost without truly losing, but that means that we are _still_ losing. There is just no escape, not here.”

“Then _where_ would you think there is?” Brienne asks.

“If the Black Road is fertile again after some time’s passed, after some warm winds have blown away a bit of the ash… what if that’s no single occurrence, you see?” Jaime ponders.

“You are not proposing what I think you are proposing,” Brienne says, suddenly out of breath.

“You know me better than most, so I suppose you do the math by now.”

“It was you who said that we can’t go back there, and you were right,” Brienne argues, her voice still slightly shaking.

After the war was lost-not-lost, the two sat together on a stretcher provisionally set up in the sickbay as they were recovering from their wounds. It was a conversation neither one of them wanted to have.

Guilt is a wicked thing, even if you are not supposed to be the one to bear it, because you didn’t do it.

It’s a phantom pain of another person that you feel as your own, and Gods know that Jaime shouldered a lot of those phantoms, had to welcome them into his own darkness, wicked shadows haunting him.

And no matter what Brienne said, still says to this very day, is ever going to unload that burden from him again. Because he can’t shake off the feeling that it could have been prevented, that he should have acted sooner, faster, different.

As the petty fights over power in the Seven Kingdoms still prevailed, with self-proclaimed President Cersei Lannister doing anything she could to keep that which, as it turned out, she held most dear, even dearer than family, her own brother and lover all the same.

Naturally, the reports that came from the capitol framed the wildfire explosion on Tarth as an act of treason against the Crown led by Selwyn Tarth that went horribly wrong.

Brienne can still remember when she heard the transmission blare over the loudspeakers while they were already at Winterfell, preparing for the war against the living dead. The woman who spoke, one of Cersei’s minions who did all sorts of services for her while still in the capitol, or so Jaime informed her, said it with a calmness that makes her shudder to this very day.

_“Senator Selwyn Tarth, former friend to the Crown, has turned out a traitor to the country. Secret information by our agencies has brought to light a plot designed to bombard the capitol, with its primary focus being the Red Keep in order to viciously murder President Cersei Lannister. For that, he meant to import the illegal substance of wildfire in the shape of several missiles from across the Narrow Sea. The Secret Service did not release any information on where exactly and how Selwyn Tarth acquired the weaponry, though the assumption is that he collaborated with the most feared Dragon Queen, as she calls herself. However, it never came to this act of terrorism against the capitol as the missiles, due to causes unknown, exploded on the Sapphire Isle, destroying its entire landscape, and costing the lives of thousands of good citizens, loyal to our President, as they fell victim to the schemes of Senator Selwyn Tarth…”_

Of course, none of this was true. Her father would have rather died than bring the vicious green liquid near any of the people of their home. He loved Tarth about as much as he loved his one living daughter.

It was a lie, propaganda, to disguise the true intentions behind the attack, the true target Cersei meant to strike at. Because those bombs were aimed at Tarth, not King’s Landing. They were aimed at Selwyn Tarth, at the people of the Sapphire Isle, not at President Cersei Lannister and the population of King’s Landing. They were intended to conceal that she just did anything within her powers to drive her brother back after he “betrayed” her by joining the one true cause there was and is. She wanted to cause a rift between them, between the different parties, tried to cut any fragile bond of fraternity that had been nurtured in the common cause of the war against the White Walkers.

Tarth was an easy target. Euron Greyjoy did the deed, hoping to not just gain her hand in marriage in turn, believing that this would give him more power in the autocratic state that she was trying to build while there was no one enforcing the laws, as all those in power for such had long since driven North.

She simply had some of the vaults and crypts beneath the city cleared out, no matter the dangers that meant, loaded them on a ship, and the rest is something they will never know in all detail. Because the only secret information they ever got was that Euron somehow managed to drop the bombs on Tarth and watched it burn.

And with it, any sense of home, any sense of her family went up in ashes she never even got the chance to see climb into the sky.

Jaime still blames himself for that, though he probably bears even more pain in his heart for what he told her back in the sickbay:

“I know, before the war, we two said that first thing we’d do after this ordeal was over and dealt with, is to make for Tarth, pay tribute to your father, but… we haven’t won. The White Walkers are coming and they will continue to come. There is nothing but ash there, we know that one thing for certain. We can’t survive there, even with some provisions packed up on a boat to take us. Right now, the one thing that matters is that we survive, you understand?”

Jaime was likely most surprised that Brienne simply agreed with him back then, no matter the tears in her eyes as she muttered the words. “He won’t come back whether I am there or not… and if anything good came of it, then it is that there is no way they can make him into one of their own. He and the others are out of their reach forever… we will make South first chance we get, see what’s left of the world.”

And that is what they did, never looking back to the black trails marking both their losses, sacrifices, for a cause that was emptied out over time.

“But back then I thought that there was no way anything would ever grow again after the wildfire swept across the lands,” Jaime says, pulling Brienne back to the room, of him beside her. “But this here… it proves that there is something.”

“Now don’t say hope,” she snorts.

“Not hope, but… a small chance, maybe,” he sighs.

“A hunch.”

“An alternative.”

“The difference being what exactly?” she asks.

“We live in a time that has two alternatives – you live or you die. That’s it,” he answers.

“Well, that is the one set of alternatives we all face,” Brienne points out.

“ _Exactly_ , but there is nothing beyond that. If we stay for too long, the White Walkers catch up to us. If we keep moving, there is no way for us to ever have a place to stay at. We are simply running… all the time. That is the one alternative we have,” Jaime replies, his voice suddenly shaking a bit.

“And Tarth is supposed be what? Home? Home is no more, Jaime. We gave up on that notion long time ago, for better or worse. Tarth is a rubble of ash after what Cersei had Euron do to it,” Brienne insists, chewing on her lower lip, her eyes slightly stinging from tears she no longer allows herself to shed. Brienne cried so many tears for her lost home, but at some point, she had to stop and look forward.

That doesn’t make it sting any less, though.

“I just kept thinking that Tarth was burned quite some time before the Black Road came into existence. Even more time was given to the isle. There is water close by, all around, actually. Maybe that did the trick. And now we are not too far away from the coast anyway. If we sail across now… we don’t need as many provisions as we would have, had we started from the North straight away,” Jaime explains, somewhat frantic.

“You are still not telling me what is going on inside your head. And I should know, because there is no one how knows you like me, upon your own insistence,” Brienne points out to him, looking Jaime deeply in the eye, and he knows that she couldn’t be any righter. She can see right through him with her big blue eyes.

“You remember the night before the big battle?” he asks quietly.

She sits up straighter on the thin mattress, hugging her long legs to her flat chest. “Of course.”

“I promised you something that night,” Jaime says hoarsely.

“Yeah.”

That he would protect her, with his life, with his last move, last breath, last everything. The words slipped from his mouth almost without a single sound, but Brienne heard them echoing like a giant bell inside her head, because no words had rung truer inside her than these.  

In a time clouded by nothing but doubt and fear, his words left no doubt in her that they were true, absolutely true.

Those words the realest thing she ever had, beside Jaime himself.

“I want to honor that vow, but as things stand… it’s only a matter of time until I am bound to become an oathbreaker all over. I seem to be that misfortunate to forsake my vows sooner or later,” Jaime says, shaking his head.

“Well, we came out of that battle alive… and as of now, we are still among the living,” Brienne argues quietly.

“I was never afraid of much of anything, you know? When I was still young and foolish, I thought that I could do it all. Keep everyone I cared about safe. Be an army general. Be this, be that. Do this, achieve even more. Then the service came under this and that President, and I thought I could keep it all together. That I could mend the damage done. But I still didn’t really have fear. I knew of dangers, but I thought that even if I can't beat them… well, that I will have done my best. But ever since that battle, I know fear. And it damn well sucks,” Jaime says, gritting his teeth towards the end.

“You didn’t seem frightful to me as of late. Remember the last time you jumped that White Walker to yank it to the ground? That was brave to the point of being completely foolish,” Brienne argues.

“I don’t fear death. I don’t fear the White Walkers, even,” he argues, a small smirk tugging at his lips as he goes on, “And that is my signature move now, wench. Don’t insult it.”

“Then what do you fear – if it isn’t the two most straightforward sources of your distress?” Brienne questions.

“You are,” is the simple reply.

“Oh, so now we are at it. You blame me for that? Most kind of you,” she scoffs.

“I don’t blame you, but you are the source of that distress, no way of denying it,” Jaime answers.

“Then what did I do to cause the condition?” she asks.

“It’s nothing you do,” he answers.

Brienne rolls her eyes at him. “Will you quit talking riddles already?”

“We are losing this fight – and I know we are. It’s only a matter of time. Precisely because there are no alternatives anymore. It’s just running from what seems inevitable. But I made a promise to keep you safe. Taking those two together means that… that I can’t keep my promise to you. So my _fear_ is not for something you do, but for that the day will come rather sooner than later that you won’t live anymore.”

They rather bypass those kinds of conversations as of late, since darkness and doom is their constant companion anyway, but Brienne can hear the urgency in his voice, the sheer need to say it out loud now. She can see it in his eyes, in the way his stump keeps moving, likely missing the hand no longer there.

She leans her head into the hollow of where collarbone and neck meet, a simple gesture that she learned actually did more than she ever thought it possible. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

Brienne can feel him lean his head against hers lightly.

“You better see to that, but you know how I mean it,” he says with a small smile that is still torn down by the sad sound of his voice.

“I do. And I feel the same,” she whispers, before pulling away again to look at him, her glance a warning. “So you better don’t die on me. Remember, you almost did when you lost your hand.”

That is the kind of guilt that _she_ carries inside her heart the same way that Jaime carries Tarth’s and her father’s demise inside his.

When they got captured by the Brave Companions, Brienne was supposed to see Jaime back to King’s Landing, an unofficial prisoner’s exchange – him in return for Sansa and Arya Stark. Nothing ever became of that deal in the end, but that sent them on a trip across the Seven Kingdoms off the usual paths, only to fall into the hands of those wretched Boltonmen, after Jaime almost managed to escape and they had been too busy fighting each other in a battle of life and death.  

The men meant to rape her that decisive night, the night that changed everything, turned it over and put it out of place. They had already dragged her into the bushes beside the spot where they had made camp for the night. Mentally, Brienne had already prepared herself for the assault, had told herself over and over that she endured the pains of military training, that this would not break her, though deep down, the fear was there that it would, no matter how tough she tried to act.

Those bastards were already trying to get into her pants when they got called back by the leader by name Locke – after Jaime had made up a lie about Tarth being a sapphire mine holding all sapphires of Westeros that made her a valuable prisoner to leave in one piece. And that even though Jaime didn’t have to do it, even though they hated each other by the time, even though he had more reason to see her killed than he had to care about her safety.

_And yet, he called out._

And yet, there was no reward for the act – instead, Locke cut his hand off, the hand with which he had been one of the best soldiers the country has ever seen, a perfect shot whose reputation in terms of his skills went unquestioned even after he was marked as the Kingslayer.  

“And you almost died on me after the big battle was over,” Jaime reminds her. “That White Walker almost had you there.”

“But just almost,” she insists.

“That thing tore right through your midriff,” he argues, the memories still fresh on his mind. He sacrificed his hand to protect her at a point of time when he barely cared about her personally, and Jaime thought this was the greatest agony he ever suffered, but seeing her go down and not move? That felt like almost dying a thousand times stuffed into a single moment, until she gasped and got back up, no matter the blood running down her side.

“In sum: We are fucked.”

“Yeah, we are fucked,” she mutters.

There is no way to wrap it into fancy words. Even Beric with his way of capturing people when they are on the verge of falling apart cannot breath more hope into their suicide mission.

They are simply fucked.

Their future is fucked, was taken away from them, ripped out of their clutches, no matter how desperately they held on.

And now they are at a point of time where a flower bears more hope than anything they achieved these past few years.

There is a moment of silence that feels as though it lasted forever.

“But maybe we aren’t as fucked on Tarth,” Jaime says cautiously.

“Or maybe we are. What if the White Walkers made a new hideout there? Wanted to check out the seaside for a while?” Brienne points out.

She entertained all those thoughts, lying wide awake next to Jaime. She bred out all kinds of scenarios, one worse than the other. She meant to brace herself, meant to prepare herself for the worst, but somehow, it only made the pain ever the more unbearable.

“Then at least we take down a whole lot of motherfuckers with us,” Jaime laughs drily.

“So what? We just ditch all this here?” Brienne questions.

“What _is_ all this here? It’s just a bunch of men who long since know they lost the fight but can’t seem to admit it. There is no purpose in what we do beyond shooting as many sons of bitches dead as we can. But that is a fight we can’t win, that’s what won’t change,” Jaime says.

“They are also limited in number.”

“But they are less limited than we are,” he argues.

“Well, but they all have a poor aim and are rather dumb,” Brienne answers halfway jokingly, but then turns her gaze back towards him in all sincerity. “Jaime, if you are just sick of staying with the Brotherhood…”

“Oh, trust me, I am sick and tired of their bitching. I am sick of their faces, their voices, the way they walk, the way they talk, to my face or behind my back,” he mutters. “And Gods know that I am fed up always having to watch your and my back because they could turn on us any minute now. I am tired of it, I won't deny it.”

“Well, we are no different. You said yourself that we put ourselves first,” Brienne points out.

Which was tough enough a challenge for her to come to terms with. Brienne didn’t like the thought when Jaime told her that she was not trust any of them, and that if it came to it, she should leave them behind and never look back.

“They are not us. It’s us two against the wasteland. They are just folks we travel with,” is what he explained to her that time.

“They fought with us in the war,” she said.

“And they lost with us in the war, and they would do the exact same thing. In those times, every man to himself, believe me this.”

And she believed, and she took to heart, so to protect him and herself.

“I know. Every man for himself, every woman for herself. That’s how it goes. But that is not the reason why I am thinking about this. They aren’t worth the effort. If I think it’s too unsafe to stay with them, I am getting you and we ride away before they even know what’s happening,” he huffs. “They could come with, for all I care.”

“ _Come with_? Do you want to build an ark, is that it?” Brienne scoffs.

“Not _build_ it, just see whether there is one… that can be expanded,” Jaime argues with a slight grin.

“You are sincere about this.”

“Do I look like I am joking?” he snorts.

“No,” Brienne answers, shaking her head.

“Then yes, I am sincere about this,” Jaime says, looking her deep in the eye. “That may be our one chance at an alternative. Because let’s be realistic… we aren’t getting younger. We aren’t getting healthier. Our wounds don’t make us superheroes all of a sudden, make us invincible or anything.”

“No, sadly not,” she sighs.

“We will become slower, we will make mistakes, sooner rather than later. And they will be there to destroy us once chance arises. Because they got the alternative. Because they are the hunters, not the prey,” Jaime goes on.

“Well, even if Tarth is… what you say, has come back like the Black Road somewhat… we have seen them cross the water. We know that going to the islands is no guarantee for safety. We saw it on Bear Island. They tore those fighters to pieces, every single one of them.”

“And I am not saying that Tarth is the safe haven,” he says. “I long since gave up on the hope of finding an ark that somehow no one else has bothered go looking for.”

“Then what _is_ your hope?” Brienne asks.

_What is there to hope for?_

“The alternative.”

“But _what_ alternative, Jaime? Dying over there or here? What’s the difference?” Brienne asks, her voice now shaking.

“That we may have some days of peace,” he answers, his voice now shaking along. “That we may have enough time to not just run, but stay somewhere. Build a small hut for ourselves, whatever it may be.”

“A home,” Brienne whispers breathlessly, eyes wide.

“Exactly,” he mutters.

The thing that is no more.

_But maybe it can be again?_

“I think that if I want to keep my promise to you… it’s not just about somehow keeping you alive, having your back in battle. It dawned on me as I stood on the Black Road, flowers gleaming in the light of day. I thought all this time that your survival is my one purpose left here, but it’s that you live, you know,” Jaime tells her.

“That we live, you mean,” she replies, understanding.

He smiles at her sadly.

“Kingslayers band together, remember?” Brienne says, her voice still slightly shaking. “It’s not just you who thinks like that. You haven’t been happy in a long time, and I know that. We both didn’t live… ever since the war was put on a hold.”

“I am happy so long I am around you, as happy as one can be with ice zombies looming likely just behind those plains down South,” Jaime tells her. “I just think that we have long since run out of alternatives. And we won’t get any unless we start running some direction again instead of aimlessly wandering about.”

_We need an intervention._

“And Tarth may be our Black Road towards an alternative,” Brienne speaks, her lips barely moving apart as she ponders the words.

“Might be. Might not be. There is no sure way to tell. It’s as you said, it’s actually… more of a hunch,” Jaime says, suddenly feeling stupid for ever having proposed it. Perhaps he got too high in spirits thanks to the gasoline-slash-booze.

But as he stood there on the Black Road, as he heard the crow screeching above his head, he thought he knew a secret that no one else figured until now – that there is a way of intervening a vicious cycle, break the pattern, destroy it, tear it all down.

“People have set great things into motion based on a hunch. Wars were fought over a hunch. I suppose great power lies in humans’ hunches. While wrong some many times, it is their intuition that makes them do extraordinary things to either see those things achieved or prove them as either wrong or true,” Brienne answers pensively, her gaze falling back on the flower still in her hand, coming to life as she keeps twisting it between her fingers.

“And it would be a lie to claim that I wouldn’t like seeing whether there is something on Tarth… back home…,” Brienne mutters.

She always wanted to lay down flowers, even when she was fully aware that they would die even faster than flowers come to wither in general, but they were the living, and Tarth was the realm of the dead, so it didn’t seem palpable.

And yet, it suddenly is. She can feel it twisting between her fingers.

“For me, it’s just… I’d rather spend just a single day being at a home than spend ten more years wandering around aimlessly, seeing all of this slowly bur surely decay and freeze over. We ran out of ammo long time ago. And I suppose it took us quite long to come to terms with that fact,” Jaime admits, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Holidays,” Brienne mutters.

Jaime shrugs. “Maybe… I think we earned it.”

Though the thought of having earned something took quite some time for Jaime to manifest inside his head. He didn’t feel deserving of much of anything. After all the crimes he committed. Though curiously, the person he’s done damage to in order to protect his family, himself, was likely as forgiving as a boy can be who sees everyone and everything at the same time. The same boy he tossed out the window back at Winterfell was the one who actually, genuinely, for all Jaime could judge, thanked him, told him that he did what as necessary to set things into motion.

It took Jaime the entire war and quite some time after that to bring those conversations back at Winterfell to the front of his mind, and over time, it was as though whenever he heard a crow shriek up in the sky, he heard the black-haired boy all over, the shreds of words losing context but gaining on meaning.

“I needed wings, but for that, I had to lose my legs. Or else I would have kept wandering around, not knowing that I had to do it another way, travel another path.”

“It was about creating a chance where there was none.”

“It was about interventions – at high costs. Not just for me, but everyone.”

“And even now I can’t tell how it all ends. I just know how all of it began. I see what _could_ be, but that is a vast ocean of possibilities, and I can’t tell which one will be swept to this shore.”

“Because of what you did to me, I was able to do things to other people, just like I was able to do things for other people. And the same is true for you. Some great many things happened thanks to you. And there is an alternative wherein you can keep doing just that.”

“It’s not forgiveness you should be seeking. It’s the intervention that you should strive for. But bear in mind that not all interventions mean war. Not all interventions mean fight. Some interventions seem incredibly small and yet can bring about a storm, can bring peace or havoc, or begin something new. Interventions are our way of creating alternative scenarios. And that is what it’s all about: Creating alternatives, because without them, there are no chances.”

Jaime always reckoned that the interventions Bran Stark planted related to the children of prophecy, to his brother, actually cousin, to the Dragon Queen, to the child she was supposed to bear but never brought to term as Daenerys made the choice between herself and the life inside her and the creature she considered her child by the time her journey in Essos began. Jaime thought that their interventions were meant to turn the tide. Not so much because he had a particular faith in them. That is far from Jaime’s own notions, no, no. He just knew that people followed those two readily, against the odds of the nature of their union when Jon Snow’s parentage was revealed by Brandon Stark upon his return to Winterfell. They didn’t see them as their new united leaders, even though the two seemed rather convinced when they came North, foolishly believing that the Northerners would just readily accept that woman as their leader.

_After all, the North was always of a rather separatist spirit – and is to this very day._

And yet, they had the charisma. They brought the forces together against these very odds. And Jaime dared to believe that this was the cunning interventions that Bran kept talking about when they first met. Jaime thought those two were meant to be the boy’s intervention.

But they weren’t.

Or at least they weren’t big enough an intervention to create alternatives, to nurture chances in a fight that came to leave them open like a wound.

So perhaps the boy was simply wrong, or they were simply not strong enough to create the chances he could see.

Perhaps the one fault he made was to overestimate them.    

Or perhaps it was actually his own hope, locked away between almost dead seeming eyes, that killed the hope for the rest, having dreamed too far ahead, so that, in the end, he also only ever dropped a stone into the vastness of an ocean.  

“I think we earned it, yes,” Brienne says, pulling Jaime away from the memories that usually return only upon a crow’s shriek, back to her sitting beside him on the thin mattress. “Though there is no sure way to tell that there will be a reward at the end of that road.”

“No, guarantees are a thing of the past,” Jaime agrees.

“But promises prevail,” Brienne points out.

“Seems like it. Or rather, I damn well hope so because I intend on keeping mine.”

“Good…,” she sighs. “So what? We tell them and then see that we get to the coast?”

“Well, we will have to see that we find ourselves a boat. Depending on who is going to join, we may need a bigger or smaller one,” Jaime says, surprised at how easy it seems to weave that fragile dream of a future all of a sudden.

But that is the thing – Brienne makes future a much more palpable concept for Jaime, makes it the one concept of value.

“Might be good to see about one of the port cities close by. Could be that one of the ships just needs fixing,” Brienne suggests, trying to ease into the idea, into the hunch, the hope it may come to bear.

Because flowers grow on ash, as it turns out.

Life can come out of death, it appears.

“Almost feels like a plan already,” Jaime says with a small smirk.

“Almost, yeah,” she agrees.

“Am I just too drunk and imagine things or do you just follow me on a hunch right now?” Jaime jokes.

“Well, not a _hunch_ entirely, thinking about it. You have something to back up your claim,” Brienne argues, holding up the crooked flower. “And in any case, you know my one dark secret, too.”

“Do I?” he chuckles softly.

“That I trust the Kingslayer like no other,” Brienne answers, looking at him, her eyes containing all messages she utters, but with much more intensity.

He smiles softly. “Certainly a dark secret to keep.”

“Indeed, but I learned a few things about those secrets over the last couple of years. Had a good teacher, it seems,” Brienne replies.

“This is still quite shocking to hear from honorable Brienne of Tarth of all people.”

She rolls her broad shoulders. “Well, you said yourself that I have to let go of some of it in order to survive.”

It was a tough lesson for her. Brienne always believed, and as much as she can still believes, in oaths and promises. It was because of that she started to have faith in a man who was considered to be a man without honor by the rest of the country. She could uphold her oaths even through the strenuous mission of tracking down Sansa Stark and bringing her to safety at Castle Black.

 _Well, however long that safety lasted_ , considering that the White Walkers were already marching down South by the time they arrived at the Wall.

But rather sooner than later, she had to keep secrets from one commander to the other, not to upset them, keep them in the dark. She had to lie to Sansa’s face some many times to keep her out of the worst, after she had been through literal hell at the hands of Ramsay Bolton. She lied right to Daenerys Targaryen’s face some many times, to know Jaime protected from a woman whose temperament got the better of her on more than one occasion as she came to grips with the fact that the man who helped put her into exile was now on her side and wasn’t going anywhere and was not hers to judge. And Brienne long since lost count of the times they told lies to strangers off the usual tracks as they headed down South after the war not won, not lost. How many times they said they would stay a while longer, only to slip away in the midst of the night, fearing that the people had grown hostile or had been all along. How many times they pretended to be other people, pretended to bear other names, so not to be linked to the names that had long since carried across the rubble that is now Westeros. And they lied equally as much to Beric and his men, most likely.

_Ideals don’t find much ground to grow on in an unideal world._

“I wished we lived in a world where you could keep all of your ideals. They were for the good, you know,” Jaime says, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Wrong place, wrong time, it seems,” she sighs.

“Yeah, damn well bad timing. All of it. Bad timing. Lost chances, too late for this, too early for that,” he says, shaking his head as he glances over to the small window.

“Well, on some matters the timing was not the almost bad,” Brienne argues, offering a gentle smile.

He turns back to her. “Such as?”

Brienne leans back down on the mattress, pulling him along with her by keeping a gentle if firm grip on his shoulder. He simply follows her movements, knowing them as his.

“ _Our_ timing was not entirely off,” Brienne whispers.

“Well, we could have overcome our own delusion and stubbornness sooner,” Jaime exhales, rolling over so that he faces towards her.

“Could we?” she asks with a small smile tugging at her lips.

“Want to know another dark secret of mine?” he asks.

“It’s not like you are going to stop now, even if I said no,” she snorts.

“When we were in the military camp at Riverrun, and you rode right up to my tent on your bike…,” he goes, tracing nonsense patterns on her upper arm.

“What? Was I supposed to leave it with one of your foolish soldiers to hop on and crash her right into the next best ditch?” Brienne scoffs.

“Anyway, when you suggested that we handle that military operation differently and hammered some sense into my stubborn brain… that moment short before you turned away to grab your bike and get into Riverrun to negotiate with the Blackfish… I was that close to holding you back, you know,” he admits.

Brienne blinks at him. “Hold me back?”

“For a moment there, I wanted to hold on to you and tell you not to go.”

“I don’t think you would have convinced me back then,” Brienne argues, shaking her head. She was far too stubborn by that point of time, too set on serving Sansa to even begin to realize that Sansa was just one step on her mission, even if the mission itself turned out to be rather pointless in the end, after the war was lost-not-lost.

“Maybe not, but at that moment, I was down to giving it a try,” Jaime chuckles.

“How?” she asks softly.

That is when Jaime leans in closer, pulling her to him, his stump resting in the hollow of her spine. At first, he merely brushes his lips against hers, but soon, they deepen the kiss, knowing those moves about as good as each other’s routines, wanting to get all of each other at once, because they need each other more desperately than anyone will ever know.

“You think that would have had me convinced?” she asks breathlessly once they pull apart.

“Maybe not, but I would have gained some time to think of something more reasonable,” Jaime chuckles.

“And what would that have been?” Brienne asks, relishing the sensation of his arm gently moving up and down her side in the affectionate manner that she only ever saw other people exchange but never thought she would receive.

“Run away while we still could,” he says with a small smirk.

“To where would we have run?” Brienne asks with a  frown.

“Sail West of Westeros, see what’s there. Travel East. I have never been to Essos. Supposedly, there are some nice spots there as well. Tyrosh. Lys. Maybe the Summer Islands. Someplace warm, away from the Long Night, away from Winter Come. And just forget all the rest,” Jaime explains.

And he should have done it, in the retrospective. While he didn’t admit it to himself back then, he was long since in love with the tall woman whose honor inspired him more than words can even begin to grasp. He should have jumped on that moment where his hand twitched. He should have pulled her over and kissed her and never let go again, should have abandoned the armies, the stubborn Blackfish, all of it.

But that time is over now, so there is no way of undoing it.

There is only kissing her now, feeling her now, being with her now.

“My father always said that there is no sense to ponder the past what ifs. There is no way of changing them anymore anyway. The past is gone, the future is far away. We only have the present to shape, and that is what we are to do,” Brienne tells him.

“Wise words.”

“Well, maybe it’s no longer so much a what if of the past now, with Tarth,” Brienne goes on rather hesitantly.

“Maybe.”

“There is at least the alternative that there is something,” Brienne whispers.

“Right,” he mutters, stroking a loose strand of still damp hair behind her ear. “And hey, think about it. Tyrion’s always said that he wanted to go with a cup of wine and hand and a woman around his cock. Now, I don’t care about the wine, but I suppose going down forever while we go down on each other might be the perfect ending.”

She knocks against his shoulder. “You keep those thoughts far, far away.”

“What? Sex with you? That is divine. Worth dying for,” Jaime laughs.

Brienne looks at him disapprovingly. “Now the booze is talking.”

“And the booze is talking nothing but the truth,” he chimes teasingly.

She rolls her eyes as she lets go of his shoulder, tapping against his cheek a few times to remind him of her discontent over the matter before taking up her spot on the mattress again.

A while back, it would have been unimaginable for Brienne to even begin to think that a man would want her so, would love her – and desire her, even if the man sat right across her by the crowded dinner tables, slept next to her ever since they arrived at Winterfell to fight the war that was necessary for all of them, no matter the outcome.

However, an ease has spread inside her over time, a comfort that extends that of Jaime’s arm wrapped around her, of his lips on hers, of him inside her, united, as one.

The men are busy talking, she is aware. They make their little jokes, exchange their gazes. Some even jokingly call her “Kingslayer’s Whore” when Jaime is not around, knowing that he would lynch them at once if he were to know, but Brienne actually never really cared, which surprised her, to be sure. Brienne never took insults to her honor easily, but there is no shame in what they do, there is no shame in who they are to each other and to each other only. And according to Jaime, all laughter dies out the moment they can hear them in their “passionate coupling” because deep down, they are just jealous, are reminded that among the Brotherhood, there is no one to share that with, not just the sex, but the embrace, the familiarity. Many lost their families in the wars, some left wife and children, girlfriend or fiancée, somewhere without a chance of finding them again as people fled and scattered across the country like dust in the wind.

Brienne can still remember how that part of a story now only theirs began, or rather, how that chapter began, because their story goes further back than most will ever know to read in the way they act around each other. 

It was the night before the big battle began. They both thought that there would be no way that the would see the end of the day after tomorrow.

They thought this would be their last night in this world.

Their last night together.

And so they wanted to be together, in all the ways that matter.

Brienne had always been rather hesitant of even the smallest of affections. However, that night, there laid a strange empowerment, a great calming in the unknown of the next day. There was nothing to lose but everything to gain.

She surprised herself and Jaime with the confidence that soon flooded every fiber of hers as she kept answering the call her body had given her for a long time already. How easily she returned his feverish kisses with the same amount of fervor, the same kind of primitive need. But what took her by surprise perhaps even more than that was the apparent need she was met with on Jaime’s behalf, fumbling for her clothes with twitching hand, an appetite suddenly awakened or perhaps unleashed at last that could hardly be satisfied.

When their bodies joined for the first time, Brienne expected all the stuff her Septa had hammered into her brain as a child, about the horrors of this, but there was no horror, there was hardly any pain, only gain, only goodness, only warmth, comfort in a world that was bound to lose it fast. There was just him and her, nothing else.

Despite the fact that all had been advised to get as much sleep as they could, they hardly got any as they kept satisfying the appetite that had been there for longer than they will likely ever admit to themselves, let alone each other. Brienne herself couldn’t get enough of his adoring expression as they kept moving against each other, with each other, the yearning in his gaze, the raw need of her right beside him, of being right within her, right with her, again and again until both their small worlds shattered and collapsed into one another as they went over the edge as often as they could that night, making good on all the time they did not when maybe they long since should have.

They kept the terror and fright out of each other’s bodies by taking the place inside one another, allowing no one and nothing between them but themselves.

And that is what is has been for them ever since. They are each other’s anchor, each other’s remedy to pains and fears they can’t even begin to admit to themselves.

And if they had to volunteer, fight, and lose-not-lose the war against the living dead for that, then Brienne must say… that is worth it.

Love is the only thing of matter without being of actual matter, she learned. And Brienne also came to understand that living the love, experiencing it, feeling it not just directed at someone who treats you kind, but have it come back to you with equal measure, is what gives love power, strength, makes a blade of it with which you can strike at any enemy coming your way.

“So… we’ll talk to Beric,” Brienne says, returning to Jaime’s arm wrapped around her, the small touches that secretly have her wanting more, if not for her body being tired of the day and the news just heard, the prospect of a chance somewhere out there, at a place she once called home, and would love to call such again.

“We will in due time,” he assures her.

“Tomorrow.”

“Why are you always so pushy?” he snorts with a grin.

“I don’t see any sense in keeping it from him, or any of them.”

“True again,” Jaime agrees. “Well, maybe the Hound will join if I keep telling him there is a chance of chicken out there.”

“What would make him of your interest?” Brienne frowns. “You said yourself just tonight that you don’t care about him.”

“And I don’t, but if our alternative proves to have fertile ground… it can’t harm to have a priest around, reluctant now or not. If we can build a new world… he might come in useful, just in case,” he argues.

He had it all inside his head back down Black Road, he heard it in the crow’s cry.

“In case of what?” she asks.

Jaime shrugs. “Well, he can give his blessings and all.”

“Blessing for _what_?” Brienne narrows her eyes at him.

“Oh, you know, when a man loves an utterly stubborn woman very much…,” he says with a smile, his voice trailing off, but Brienne interrupts him, “Easy there, hotspur. We better take one step at a time. First step – talk to the others. Second step – find a boat. Third step – sail to Tarth. Fourth step – see if there is something to build on or if we have to sail right back… and going from there, anything could happen.”

“Ever the more a reason to consider, wouldn’t you think?” Jaime argues.

_Why wait for a future that may be very, very short?_

“Now the booze is _really_ talking.” She shakes her head.

“I’d kick the Hound’s ass right now to take our vows, I wouldn’t care. Told you before,” Jaime insists.

“Whilst drunk. I seem to spot a pattern there,” she teases.

“It’s one of those truths that easily slip from my tongue after it was loosened up a bit,” Jaime tells her.

“Well, maybe that is another alternative, one that’s further away,” Brienne suggests.

“Why make it far away? Not much sense in pretending, is there?” Jaime argues.

“It's not pretending, really. Just something to reach a bit further into the future, try to make it expand just a little bit,” she tells him quietly.

If Jaime dares to dream away, maybe it’s alright for her to do the same?

Maybe now is the time to dare for some fragile dreams to rise high, instead of keeping them deeply locked away within themselves?

“I can live with that,” Jaime chuckles.

“So… we give future a shot,” Brienne whispers, motioning closer to him again, letting the thought seep right beneath her skin, to let warmth spread throughout her.

“We give future a shot, see if any alternatives come out. And if not… we can still go back to square on and start over,” Jaime says.

“That has a nice ring to it.”

“Let’s see how long it will keep echoing.”

“And how far that echo travels,” Brienne sighs.

Who knows? If there is an ark on Tarth, it might be where people can join again?

Or is that too far ahead into a future unknown already?

He pulls her impossibly closer to the point that Brienne can feel his heartbeat, which proves to be one of the most calming melodies she ever heard, which she realized the first time when they slipped into sleep the night before the battle where they let themselves happen. They just held each other close, their heat still heavy in the air, and she listened to his heartbeat calming down until it hammered as steady as a metronome.

It is during those moments that Brienne stops caring about all the bad that looms above them. In his embrace, even this mad world makes sense.

She closes her eyes with a sigh. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah, tomorrow,” Jaime agrees.

Brienne slips into sleep rather fast tonight, relishing the warmth of Jaime’s body pressed tight against her, getting lost in it, dreaming away on it, to the point of where Jaime’s hunch extends, of how it could be like, lying in his arms while on Tarth, watching the night fall over small flowers, grasses, tiny trees and brushes. She dreams away to the possibility of a home, however short-lived, of her home, the home that now only makes sense if it has Jaime in it.

However, Brienne finds herself ripped out of that cocoon of comfort far too soon as shouting starts to carry up to their room from the bar, footsteps, hurried, anxious, on the edge. By that time, she already knows what is going to happen, and as she can feel Jaime rise up from the mattress, he knows as well.

“Just one damn night,” he groans as he flips his legs out of bed. “All I am asking. One damn night of peace. Is that asked so much? Seven Hells.”

One night of just lying close to Brienne without the living dead scratching on their doors, that was all he is asking, if only to linger in the chance of the hunch a while longer, if only to treasure her hopeful expression, her soft smiles, the way her eyes gleamed at the mere possibility of going back home – and staying.

Of living instead of just surviving.

“No rest for the wicked, it seems,” Brienne sighs.

“Well, we can say that one thing for certain – they are not coming from where we kept watch,” Jaime huffs.

“Well, maybe they came over the plateau in the East. Some brushes and trees there for them to hide behind,” Brienne ponders.

“I don’t care for where they came from, I just care about sending them to where they belong,” Jaime says, picking up his gun-arm from where he left it before slipping into the comfort of the bed, however short-lived.

“True again,” Brienne agrees, rolling her shoulders. Jaime can see it straight away how her movements shift, from the softest caress to a woman ready to take on whatever enemy may come her way.

She gets up, routinely helping him strap the weapon back in place, her fingers never twitching, never trembling, knowing the moves, knowing the music that makes no sound.

And just like that, routine has them back, and small dreams of an intervention seem far away again.

It just never seems to end.

No matter how loud the crow shrieks at him that the chance is out there, that the interventions has arrived at last.

“There you go,” Brienne says, tapping against his shoulder after she finished the last strap before quickly proceeding to get back into her own gear.

“Let’s hope the guys are not too drunk yet. Or else it will be just us to fighting,” Brienne snorts, continuing to fix up her gear.  

“Well, I hardly know them sober. Maybe they need that to be passable at fighting the White Walkers,” Jaime jokes, reaching down to pick up Brienne’s shoulder piece, allowing his thumb to trace over the familiar carved out word.

 _Oathkeeper_.

A small smile flashes across his face.

“Ah, there it is!” Brienne calls out, walking over to Jaime to take the shoulder piece from him. “Couldn’t take off without it.”

“Of course not,” he says with a smirk.

_It’s hers. It will always be hers._

Brienne fixes the gear to her shoulder before grabbing her guns and other utensils she learned to use over the years.

Survival challenges one’s creativity, whereas life seems to challenge one’s imagination.

“Are you ready?” Brienne asks once she is done.

“I was born ready, wench, never forget,” he answers, winking at her.

Brienne rolls her eyes before glancing over to the window. “Looks like it’s not just a few. The men are running around like scared chickens.”

“Are there ever just a few?”

“One time by the Eyrie.”

“True again. Good times,” he sighs, fixing his boot. “Seems like tomorrow will have to wait a while longer.”

“Well, we better see to it that we both see tomorrow coming,” Brienne says. “You promised me a future, however small, for alternatives to grow.”

“And I intend to honor that vow,” Jaime says.

_I mean to keep that oath, trust me._

“I know,” Brienne replies, nodding her head, before she proceeds to warn him, “So don’t you dare die on me.”

“Right back at you, wench,” he says, quick enough to tilt her chin upward to briefly, if forcefully, bring his lips to hers, always aware that it may be the last time, no matter their efforts to keep their deaths as a part of the distant future they don’t know. And that only makes him kiss her ever the harder, ever the deeper.

Brienne returns the kiss with a similar mix of sheer need and desperation, knowing the same truth, that they have to make it count now because futures are fragile, likely to crush under its own weight.

“Then let’s go,” she says once they pull apart.

In the one direction they know: Ahead.

Towards a future that may not extend past this day.

And even if there is a tomorrow, the weight of alternatives now weighs heavy on a small flower that grew amidst the ashes of war.

However, if there is one thing they know, then it is that the things that may seem small, unimportant, irrelevant to most other people can turn the tide, can silence a storm, and maybe, just maybe, create a chance for the one thing they want:

A home to run to.

A home to stay at.

A home to live at.

A home for them.

“Let’s go.”

To the alternatives ahead.


End file.
